OpenStack Doubts Surface After BT Ultimatum
lightreading.com
When BT's Peter Willis last week told the OpenStack community to shape up or face being excluded from the operator's virtual enterprise CPE plans, he gave vent to industry concerns that have been festering like a hidden wound. (See BT Threatens to Ditch OpenStack.)
Publicly, operators have been expressing strong support for OpenStack , an open source platform being touted as one of the key technologies that will underpin future NFV deployments.
In private, it seems to have been quite another matter -- until, that is, BT Group plc (NYSE: BT; London: BTA)'s chief researcher for data networks broke ranks at this month's SDN & Openflow Conference in Düsseldorf and exposed the ugly truth.
OpenStack is simply not up to the job, said Willis, and it won't be until its backers have addressed six major technology shortcomings, including a lack of scalability, security and backwards compatibility.
If OpenStack cannot rise to the challenge, then BT is giving serious consideration to the use of another technology, and that could mean the proprietary VMware Inc. (NYSE: VMW) system.
There is even now the possibility that supporters of Open Platform for NFV Project Inc. (OPNFV), another open source platform, look to capitalize on signs of OpenStack weakness and pitch OPNFV as an alternative.
This would be a dramatic turn of events. One of OPNFV's initiatives involves building an open NFV infrastructure that includes OpenStack and members have previously indicated their aim is not to "fork" OpenStack in this way. Yet service provider discontent could produce a reaction.
"Business interests within operators, often in contrast to their CTO offices, are skeptical that OpenStack-based NFV implementations can be rolled out any time soon," says Caroline Chappell, a principal analyst of NFV and the cloud with Heavy Reading . "[That] is a touchy point for all those that have nailed their colors to the OpenStack mast."
Interestingly enough, BT's comments came in the same week that VMware unveiled changes to its service that could help to reduce what is known as the "VMware tax" -- with pricing seen as a barrier to operator adoption -- and promised to provide better support to carriers. |
